Jeffery Deaver - Edge

“They’d worked together.” I hesitated. “They were both single. They went out a few times… they spent the night once or twice.” Maree seemed almost amused at my delicate euphemism. “This was a few years before Peggy and I met.”

“Temper problem too, this guy? Like Andrew?”

“No. Nicest guy in the world. I met him.”

“You met him?”

“They were in the same profession. Saw each other occasionally.”

Peggy and he had done their residencies at the same hospital. I didn’t give Maree these details, though. “They broke up and she met me. After a couple of years, he showed up again. Just called to say hi, see if they could have coffee, a drink, for old times’ sake. But little by little it got to be strange. He began calling more frequently. Leaving messages. Innocent at first. Then getting slightly more aggressive when she didn’t call back. Then he started calling me . And showing up at the house. He even called…” I stopped speaking for a moment. I said, “Then the serious stalking began.”

I was silent, recalling those days, seeing Peggy’s face, the faces of the boys too, very young but prescient and intuitive the way children are. They’d been scared.

“I realized finally what the problem was,” I told Maree. “It wasn’t him. It was my wife. She was treating him like a normal human being. Polite, giving him the benefit of the doubt, humoring him. She was a good person, just thinking about who he’d been when they’d been going out, charming and funny. But that was the past. When all this happened he wasn’t a normal human being. He was something else. You can’t be friends with a shark or a rabid dog, Maree. That’s where you get into trouble. Andrew’s a different kind of danger but that doesn’t matter. Anyone who isn’t good for you is as dangerous as Henry Loving.”

I felt her hand take mine. For such delicate appendages, her fingers were surprisingly warm on this chill morning.

“Can I ask what happened?”

I shrugged, looking over the water. “It finally ended.” I added, “It became a police matter.”

Neither of us moved for a long moment. Maree turned and her arms snaked around me and we were gripping each other hard. She kissed me gently at first and then with more passion and desperation. Then, with a smile, she eased back slightly and slipped my hands inside her jacket, against her breasts. I felt a complicated bra. She pressed closer and kissed me again, more playfully this time, her tongue flavored with cloves or cinnamon.

Then she sat back and took my hand in both of hers. “Jo says I like bad boys. That’s one of my problems. Andrew’s a bad boy.” She looked at me and I believed the sparkle in her eyes came from something other than the transit of cloud beneath the hazy sun. “You’re one too, Corte. You’re a bad boy. But I think you’re a good bad boy.”

I recalled that I’d recently been remembering that Peggy had said much the same about me.

“Let’s go back in.”

“You don’t want to stay out here and enjoy the view?”

I smiled. “Duty first.” I rose and pulled her to her feet and we headed back to the house.

“You ever take time off, Corte?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do you do?”

“I like to play games.”

Which she seemed to think was very funny.

WHEN WE RETURNED to the house, I punched in the code and the door unlocked.

Inside we were greeted by two solemn faces staring our way. Her face white, mouth open, Joanne looked at her sister and walked forward.

“I’m so sorry,” Joanne whispered. She tentatively touched Maree’s arms and then stepped back. Maree’s face was neutral. Neither accepting nor rejecting the apology.

“Mar, look, I was possessed… I was so upset… Amanda.”

The young woman shrugged, walked to her computer, picked it up. She flopped down on the couch and scanned through it. This was something else I’d noticed that my principals had done more and more recently, in the safe house and halfway motels: withdrawn into their cyberwombs.

Joanne continued, “Please… say something.”

“I’ll be moving out when we get out of prison.” Her voice was eerily soft. She continued to look through the files of pictures.

Images. We call them images …

Joanne lowered her head, about to say something more, but couldn’t conjure the words.

It was then that my own computer pinged. I stepped into the den. It was an email from Claire duBois, with, I hoped, an answer to what I’d had her research when Joanne had told us about the Colombian diplomat.

I was prepared for some of the contents. The rest was a bit of a shock.

I stared at the screen for some moments then printed out the documents and returned to the living room. As I did, my face must have revealed something because I found the mood in the room had changed from recrimination and contrition-in varying degrees of sincerity-to intense anticipation as they gazed at me.

I read through the four or five pages carefully once more. Then I glanced toward my principals. “It’s not Maree. She has nothing to do with Loving.”

Joanne sighed. “I just thought, because of Allende…”

I continued, “My associate just talked to some people involved in the investigation. They know the man in the picture. He’s Allende’s mistress’s son. Has nothing to do with any illegal operations. He was sharing music downloads on the thumb drive. Even if they saw Maree was taking pictures, they wouldn’t have an interest in hiring Loving to get any information from her. And his phones and travel records are clean.”

Joanne shook her head. She may have continued to speak. I didn’t know. I was reading the rest of the documents duBois had sent, a third time now, just to make sure.

They drooped in my hand.

“My associate found something else,” I told them.

“What?” Ryan wanted to know. He was absently massaging his game leg.

“The answer-why Henry Loving’s been hired.” I looked up, toward Joanne.

She froze. Her eyes regarded the sheets in my hand as if she were identifying the body of a loved one.

In a low, grim voice, very different from her tone throughout the past few days, Joanne said to me, “It’s not a problem, Corte. It’s been looked into.”

Maree stared at her sister. Ryan took in Joanne’s face, flushed, lips taut.

He asked her, “What are you talking about?”

I was the person who answered. “Henry Loving’s after your wife, not you.”

“WHAT?” HE LAUGHED.

An endless moment followed, during which no one spoke, no one moved. The only sound was the wind and the clatter of the automatic ice maker in the refrigerator.

Shaking her head, Joanne walked to the window. I studied her cool eyes as a number of mysteries fell into place.

Maree asked, “What do you mean, Corte? What does Jo have to do with this?”

I didn’t answer.

“Jo,” Maree snapped. “Jo! Say something. What’s he talking about?”

“Well?” I asked her firmly. I needed answers and I needed them now.

Again her voice steady and chill, she said, “I told you, Corte. It’s been looked into. There’s no problem. Forget it.”

Ryan muttered, “Looked into?”

She ignored him and spoke to me. “Don’t you think it was the first thing that occurred to me? As soon as I heard there was a possibility of a lifter, the minute I heard, I made the call. There’ve been a dozen people looking into it. They’ve found nothing. Not a thing.”

“Henry Loving only works for people who make it very, very difficult to find out anything about them.”

She answered calmly, “And the people I’m talking about are very, very good too.”